Performers
Belcea Quartet
- Corina Belcea, Violin
- Suyeon Kang, Violin
- Krzysztof Chorzelski, Viola
- Antoine Lederlin, Cello
Program
BEETHOVEN String Quartet in C Minor, Op. 18, No. 4
BARTÓK String Quartet No. 1 in A Minor
DEBUSSY String Quartet in G Minor
Encore:
BARTÓK Adagio molto from String Quartet No. 5 in B-flat Major
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.Listen to Selected Works
At a Glance
BEETHOVEN String Quartet in C Minor, Op. 18, No. 4
In the six Op. 18 quartets he wrote between 1798 and 1800, Beethoven staked his claim to his title as a successor of Haydn and Mozart. Though he paid homage to the Classical masters, Beethoven did not hesitate to rewrite the rules for string-quartet composition; the C-Minor Quartet, for example, contains two dance movements—a scherzo and a menuetto. This disregard for convention may have been what led a bewildered critic to describe the Op. 18 quartets as “very difficult to perform and not at all popular.”
BARTÓK String Quartet No. 1, Op. 7
Like Beethoven and Shostakovich, Bartók repeatedly turned to the string quartet as a vehicle for his deepest and most personal musical thoughts. The Hungarian composer’s unrequited love for violinist Stefi Geyer partly inspired the first of his six quartets, one of several works that feature her four-note musical “signature.” The Op. 7 Quartet was first performed in 1910 by the Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet, which would later introduce Bartók’s second and fourth quartets.
DEBUSSY String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 10
Debussy’s first and only string quartet received little attention when it was first performed in Paris in late 1893. Although a handful of listeners recognized the seeds of the composer’s future greatness, many more seem to have been nonplussed by his unorthodox treatment of harmony and form—the work’s quasi-cyclical structure, in particular, was ahead of its time. Only later did Debussy’s G-Minor Quartet take its place alongside Ravel’s String Quartet as one of the glories of the chamber music literature.